TRACING * LINERS

Exhibition by João Palla at Casa Garden, Fundação Oriente’s Delegation in Macao | Until april 15

Casa Garden host na exhibition of paitings by Portuguese creative practitioner João Palla, a trained architect who is also active in the field of visual arts.

The design of a zebra crossing is executed with stripes that are laid down on the road, where there is an outline for the subsequent filling with application of paint. Road markings first came into use in England and the United States one hundred years ago and since then the methods of tracing such marks have changed little. The invariability of this artisanal technique intersects in a dialogue between drawing, memory and its materiality. And at the same time, the non-uniformity of rules for road marking between regions of the planet results in very different sui generis (of its own kind) situations.

The relationship between pre-drawing and final painting, layout, alignments, indecisions, imperfections, and transfer methods result from the actions of those who do them; liners or designers of road markings. In this work however, they conform a set of factors that are understood as new spatialities where it is intended to attribute value to the act of tracing and to sublimate it as an artistic object with its inherent plastic and graphic qualities.

João Palla, got his BA degree from Lisbon Architecture Faculty, FAUTL, Master degree in Design and Visual Culture at IADE (2006), and PhD in Science of Drawing at Lisbon Fine Arts School, FBAUL (2012). He collaborated with Architect Manuel Vicente between 1990 and 1997 in Macau and Lisbon. In 1999 with a scholarship from the Orient Foundation he completed a thesis under the title ‘Bamboo as a material for construction in Macau’. In 2000 he was one of the founding members of Architects without Frontiers, ASF Portugal. João Palla teaches at IADE since 1999 and is currently dedicated to his main activity as an architect. He has held exhibitions in Macau and Lisbon.